


Nein Nightmares

by conceptstage



Series: Single Chapter Critical Role [92]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-10-05
Packaged: 2020-11-24 18:00:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20911778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/conceptstage/pseuds/conceptstage
Summary: The Nein all deal with nightmares in different ways.





	Nein Nightmares

Jester wakes up from her nightmares sobbing. Beau will usually silently crawl into her bed and shush her kindly, telling her to go back to sleep, it’d be better in the morning. She remembers each and every nightmare in extreme detail and tells Beau about it quietly. Beau pretends to listen but she’s always half asleep and only catching every couple of words but she wraps her arms around Jester and pulls her close.

“And then he ate me,” she whispers.

Beau hums tiredly. “He’ll have to get through me first,” she mutters even though she hadn’t heard who ‘he’ was supposed to be. It didn’t really matter who he was, in the end.

Fjord always wakes up from his nightmares and pukes. Maybe it’s a habit left over from his Uk’otoa dreams or maybe his dreams were just really vomit inducing, but he barely remembers them. He remembered snippets, shadows of faces, parts of words, voices that echo and fade away. He doesn’t go back to sleep afterwards, he can’t. It doesn’t matter if he’d only slept for two hours that night, he gets up and takes over watch for the rest of the night if they were camping. If they’re at the house, he spends the morning before his friends join him in the waking world walking around the streets of Rosohna. He enjoys the chill in the air, reminds him that he is awake.

Caduceus is usually up when he gets back with warm tea and a kind smile waiting for him.

Nott’s nightmares always involve her son. Sometimes Yeza or Caleb is there too but it is always Luc at the center. Sometimes he is running from an enemy she can’t see, sometimes he is screaming for her until his voice goes out, sometimes he is drowning and she can’t reach him no matter how hard she stretches.

She always wakes up screaming his name and finds herself alone in her dark, cold bedroom. In the morning, she always asks Jester to send a message to Yeza to ask about Luc but Jester doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe she sees the red rims around Nott’s eyes, maybe knew that they weren’t going to be doing anything where she needed that spell slot, but she always does it with a smile.

Caduceus’ shock only lasts a few seconds after waking from a nightmare, then he is always filled with relief when he realizes that it isn’t real. He just closes his eyes again and lays back down to go back to sleep. 

He enjoys discussing the dreams with Jester and Nott the next morning even though Jester keeps asking if the eldritch horror that had been chasing him was cute and Nott keeps trying to steal the food off his plate.

Caleb’s nightmares are always the same one. Flames that don’t burn him, his mother’s screams. He should be used to this. 16 years of this same dream, he should be used to it. But still, he wakes up sweating, his curls sticking to his forehead and the corners of his mouth, which felt dry and like he’d been swallowing sandpaper. He pushes the blankets off of himself and tries to disappear. When they were camping he’d walk off about twenty feet from the campsite, waving off the concerns of whoever was on watch. “I am fine.” But he’s not fine. At the Xhor-haus he likes to slide under his bed, press his heated face against the cold stone and just pretend that the outside world doesn’t exist for just a moment. How long he stays under the bed depends on who finds him there in the morning. Nott will usually climb under with him and curl against his back like the old days and they’ll stay there for hours. Jester will bribe him to come out with sweets. He doesn’t really want the sweets all that much but she always looks so happy when he crawls out and takes the doughnut. Beau grabs him by the foot and tickles him until he has to throw himself out from under the bed to get away from her, then she hugs him and tells him “Knuckle up, we’ve got shit to do.”

Beau doesn’t remember her nightmares. She’s pretty sure that she has them because sometimes she wakes up suddenly, gasping for breath. Sometimes there are tears in her eyes, sometimes she’s freezing because her thrashing has knocked all the blankets off of her. She’s quiet when she dreams, which is good. She can usually get away with them without being caught by the others.

She doesn’t want to explain that she doesn’t remember them, she doesn’t know why they scare her so much, she doesn’t know what about them makes her cry, and so she likes that they don’t know she has nightmares at all.

She closes her eyes and pretends that she’s okay but she’s really not okay.


End file.
